


The Spare

by liesmyth



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Father/Son Bonding Time, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Politics, Teen Laurent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24670546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liesmyth/pseuds/liesmyth
Summary: “You are my heir, now,” Aleron said. “Act like it.”AU. Where Auguste dies at Marlas but Aleron lives, and Laurent is raised by his father.
Relationships: Laurent & Aleron
Comments: 14
Kudos: 95





	The Spare

When they brought back Auguste’s body from the front, it was still warm.

The blood was warm, too. Auguste’s regal mantle, once blue and gold, dripped red to the floor of the tent. The face was pale, eyes closed. It looked as though he were sleeping, cradled in his brother’s arms, but Laurent’s clothes had turned red too, and his face just as white. He was shaking.

“Laurent,” Aleron called, and then, “Laurent,” again, when the boy gave no sign of moving. Had he even heard?

“Take him,” he said, gesturing in Laurent’s direction, and about five different people moved immediately, then halted, until Captain Milet visibly gathered all his courage and went to kneel next to Auguste’s body. It was wrong that Auguste should be so still. He was always moving, always running about, since he had been a little boy. Hennike, who was from the mountains, used to find it endearing. Many of her ladies had not.

“Your Highness?” Milet said, quietly. He put a hand, dirty from the fighting, on Laurent’s shaking shoulder. “Your Highness, please. You’re getting drenched in blood.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Laurent tensed, shook off the hold with a jerky motion. “Go away,” he said. He did not raise his head, pressed as it was against the curve of Auguste’s neck. “Go _away_ , you were supposed to protect him, you worthless–”

“Laurent.”

He’d spoken rather loudly, this time. “Get up,” said Aleron. “You’re acting like a child. We need to – they’ll need to wash the body. And apologize.”

“ _Laurent_.”

This time, Laurent listened. He stood up slowly. There was blood on his clothes and on his face too, crimson red against the pallor, and on his hands, and caked among the strands of hair that fell on his forehead. He didn’t look at his father. He didn’t look at anyone. “Sorry, Captain,” he said, dully.

“Of course, Your Highness,” said Milet. “Do you… we should get you cleaned up, don’t you think?”

He said that while turning at Aleron, questioning. Soon they would be expected in the Council pavilion with Aleron’s generals and advisers and half the lords of Delfeur, all of them scrambling to offer their condolences and avoid even mentioning the word defeat. Aleron felt bile in his throat at the prospect of the official surrender, the Achelons’ smug faces, marching away from Delfeur from the last time — there was too much to do, much more urgent duties than looking after a boy, and yet that boy had suddenly become invaluable. Laurent needed looking after, especially in the state he was in. Aleron had no idea what to do with him, whom to leave him with. Auguste would have known. Auguste should have been here, alive and not a corpse. 

The decision was sudden. “No,” he said. “Out, please. I need to talk to my son.”

There was a noise as a dozen or so people scrambled to leave the tent, barely hiding their surprised reactions. Laurent raised his head for the first time, blinking.

“Father?” he sounded very young.

“Laurent.” He came to stand where Milet had knelt, next to the body. He deliberately did not look to it; had he given even a glance, he would have been lost. “I will ask something of you.”

He put his hands on Laurent’s shoulders. Not the embrace one would give a child, but a restrained touch for a young man. He’d never touched his second son like this before. The cloth over Laurent’s right shoulder was still wet with fresh blood, and it felt sticky against Aleron’s fingers.

“I will need to go to the Achelon encampment and negotiate surrender. I know,” he said, when Laurent’s face twisted into raw hate, so out of place on his delicate features. “It won’t be pleasant. I am going immediately. You will come with me.”

Laurent was not usually asked to go anywhere in an official capacity. He saw surprise on his face, then doubt, then understanding. He was Crown Prince now. Aleron saw his eyes visibly fill with tears. “None of that. Do you want the Achelons to see you cry?”

He shook his head. “No, Father.”

“No. You will not cry, and you will stay quiet. They will try to insult us, provoke us. Your brother…”

“He wouldn’t have cried.”

“He wouldn’t have. I will do the talking. You will watch, and listen, and in the meanwhile they will wash your brother’s body. And then we’ll… we’ll bring him home.”

“Like Mother,” said Laurent, softly. There wasn’t much to be said to that.

They walked out of the tent, and Aleron rubbed his fingers together until small flakes of dried blood fell into his palm. He could smell it everywhere, coming from Laurent.

As he exited, he looked to his Guard. “We’re going to the Achelon encampment. Now. Take care of all necessary preparations.” His mouth twisted. That meant that someone should find the banners of surrender, and the dark colours of mourning. “Send for my brother.” He would need Renier there, to give him counsel. “Councillor Jeurre, as well. And scribes. My horse and my son’s.”

He saw the twitch of surprise in the men’s faces.

“Your Majesty,” Milet said, voice low. He gave Laurent a significant look. “Is this wise? Like this? Surely there is time for him to change.”

“Now,” Aleron said. “I know what I am doing.”

Laurent had drawn himself up to full height, level with Aleron’s shoulder. A pretty, gentle blue-eyed boy, pale as a ghost, his chest and face wet with his brother’s blood. The Veretians would see him, and tell tales of Achelon cruelty. The Achelons would see him too, and with some luck they might feel a twinge of obligation not to act completely like barbarians. If he was to capitulate in front of the enemy, he would take all the advantages he could get.

“And Milet.” He grabbed his Captain by the shoulder, so that he could whisper into his ear. “Send a messenger ahead, and make sure Damianos is not there when we arrive.”

Damianos was not in the tent. The other son was, the bastard, along with an array of victory-drunk generals and a far too smug King Theomedes. Pride radiated from the Achelon King as though it had been a great accomplishment that his adolescent son had been lucky enough and skilled enough with a sword to turn Auguste’s fairness into a victory when otherwise they’d have been overrun.

“I don’t know,” said Theomedes, sipping wine from his golden goblet. The demure slave who filled it was a woman, scantily clad and collared. “I think you would have been overrun first. Engaging on open field, really?”

Aleron did not give him the satisfaction of reacting. Riding against the enemy on an open field was not traditional Veretian warfare, a wasteful strategy when one had tall walls to hid behind to save the life of soldiers and Princes, but it had been agreed with the Council that engaging the Achelons directly would have been quicker. Better for the population of Delfeur, and the economy of the region. All those fertile fields that had been spared a prolonged siege would now go to Achelon, but Aleron couldn’t find it in himself to wish they’d been burnt instead. These were still his people.

Negotiations dragged. Aleron’s brother, who had a way with words, told the assembled Achelon generals that Vere could not offer unconditional surrender, not when most of their army was still intact and all of their forts still unbroken. It wouldn’t be fair to the people of Delfeur, he explained, who had looked to their King to protect them from the invaders.

At that, one of the Achelon generals said something under his breath to the King’s bastard in rapid-fire Achelon, and they both laughed under their breath.

“Uncle,” said Laurent. He had been so quiet until now that Aleron had almost forgotten he was there, but he spoke now in a loud whisper, and all the eyes were drawn to him. “I think they forgot some of us can speak their…” he paused around an unspoken pejorative, “…language.”

The general had the good grace to look suitably ashamed. The bastard didn’t. Aleron turned back to the negotiation.

Renier made Laurent’s excuses. He was very young, and mourning. With his blood-matted fringes and wide eyes, Laurent certainly looked the part, visibly young and visibly grieving as the eyes of the assembled nobility focused on him. Aleron sat back, and let his brother speak.

Their entire family was grieving, Renier reminded them, so soon after Hennike’s death. The entirety of Vere kingdom, even; Hennike had been beloved, but still not as much as her firstborn. The royal family and all of their nobles would like nothing more than go to Arles and bury Auguste, but could not in good conscience retreat before doing all they could to defend the Veretian people against this senseless aggression.

That made Theomedes roll his eyes. “What do you want?”

“We couldn’t possibly give up on the border with Patras,” Renier said, turning pragmatic, and then they had to argue to force anything out of Theomedes that wasn’t a bare strip of land fifteen miles wide across the mountains. Theomedes, who was obsessed with traditions, kept insisting that he couldn’t accept this proposal because Achelon-language Delfians traditionally lived along the Patran border.

“It’s not as if they won’t have the rest of the province to relocate to,” Aleron pointed out. “Unless His Exalted Majesty is suggesting that you take only the Achelon-speaking areas of Delfeur, and we shall keep the rest?”

Only about one-fourth of Delfeur spoke Achelon, and Theomedes took his suggestion for the provocation it was. In the end, they managed to retain less than that, a stripe of territory along the eastern border with Patras where the fertile fields gave way to grassy hills, although the game was plentiful and all the rivers in the area flew from there. It was still crumbs of what should have rightfully been theirs.

Aleron signed the surrender in bold, firm hand. Then he walked away without turning back.

“I didn’t know you spoke Achelon,” Renier was telling Laurent once they were far enough from all those exalted Achelon warlords. May they choke on their sour wines tonight, Aleron thought.

“I don’t,” Laurent said. “I can read some words, but… I guessed what they were saying.”

“That was clever,” said Renier, just in time for Laurent to muster a grim smile and hold tighter on his reins as they made their way through the Achelon section. The barbarians were all staring. Some yelled obscenities. Some jeered. Most of them looked at Laurent, and some had the decency to stop shouting and turn their heads away.

“I don’t like this,” Laurent said, but he managed to maintain his composure until they were well into their own camp, where all men saluted and some were openly weeping. By the time they dismounted Laurent looked close to tears too, and Aleron stopped him before he could go back to the command tent where Auguste’s body had been brought.

“They’re taking care of him,” he said. “Go change. I’ll send for you when it’s time.”

He had no idea who was in charge of seeing to Laurent’s needs in the encampment, because when the campaign had begun he’d been too busy and grief-stricken and his core staff too overworked to keep track of such things. Laurent, a second prince and so young, was nominally under the purview of the King’s household, but Auguste had taken care of those arrangements himself for the most part. Laurent would have… not a nurse, he was too old for nurses. A tutor, perhaps? A trusted servant of Auguste’s? The matter of Laurent’s household would need to be dealt with. Laurent wouldn’t have guards, either, so Aleron sent two of Milet’s best to keep an eye on him. The Prince’s Guard, Auguste’s men, all carefully picked, had been wiped out almost to a man.

There were nobles, generals and Council members to meet and appease, but it could wait. Aleron accepted condolences gracefully and delegated his brother to explain the accord they’d reached with the Achelons and its consequences. Tomorrow, they would plan for the future. Tomorrow.

It was evening now, and he could finally scrape off the dirt, the blood and the suffering of this interminable day. Just this morning, Auguste had been alive. Now he rested, his wound carefully stitched and his face clear of grime, his arms crossed over his chest.

Aleron gave himself leave to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Auguste had been a spirited child, a serious young man and a poised Prince, born to be loved. Aleron had loved him with all of himself, well beyond the restrained affection that was common among nobility. At times he could hardly look at Auguste and believe he had come from him, with his quick smile and easy warmth, and now he had lived long enough to see him buried.

“Father?”

He turned around. It was Laurent, of course; Auguste was dead. Laurent had been scrubbed clean and wrangled into the darkest clothes he had brought along. Not quite black — it wouldn’t do to wear mourning colours before the war was decided even though their Queen had just died. Soldierly superstition, for all the good it had brought them. And now Laurent stood, clad in dark blues, his face blotched red and eyes circled in shadows.

“You said you would send for me.”

So he had. With one dead son lying unnaturally still he had forgotten all about the other one, who was always quiet and easily dismissed.

Laurent said, “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Here?” There was one cot in the tent, where Auguste’s body had been put, wrapped in silks and black mourning laces. There were black draperies, too, and a multitude of burning candles.

“I wanted,” said Laurent. “Auguste.” That small, halting voice was thick with tears. “I don’t think I can sleep. He always came to wish me good night.”

“Laurent,” he said, but he couldn’t find it in himself to say no. There would be time enough for harshness, he supposed, in the morning.

There were cushioned chairs all around the tent, hastily draped over with dark cloths. He watched as Laurent dragged one near to where Auguste was, then sat on it, bringing his knees up to his chest.

“Father,” he asked. “Will you stay with me?”

Aleron couldn’t understand if this was a request or a genuine question. Was Laurent asking him to remain, or waiting for him to leave?

Tentatively, “If you wish to be alone with your brother…”

“What for?” Laurent asked, defiant. His voice cracked. “I’m not a child. I know he’s dead.”

He stayed.

Laurent didn’t speak to him, not a word, and he hardly seemed to take comfort in his presence, but Aleron remained just as he'd been asked and they kept vigil until the grey hours of dawn when an attendant came to fetch him to begin the day.

“We will depart today,” he told Laurent. “Go to your tent and try to sleep, and I will send someone with food for you later.”

“I’m not hungry,” Laurent said, but he went obediently, yawning behind his hand.

Aleron watched him leave, then turned back to his work. There would be a few hours before the departure began in earnest, and there was so much to do. Men had been digging all night so that they might bury their fallen with all the respect they deserved, and the wounded were being tended to in the infirmaries. Some of them wouldn’t be able to travel for days or even weeks, and some might yet die, and it was too early to tell how many. There would be Auguste’s pavilion to pack, carefully, and Auguste’s body would be wrapped in soft cloths and lowered gently into a casket, to be brought home by sea.

Truthfully they’d all be better served by remaining longer, but the Achelons wanted their spoils of war and they wanted them now. Those who could not travel would stay behind for the moment, and a small number of the host would remain behind to bury the last of the dead and look after the wounded, and in a fortnight or so they would sail on the last of the Veretian ships leaving for Marlas.

Aleron would cross the entirety of his kingdom with his army. In a moment such as this it was important he made sure to be seen, the King returned to his people even though the Crown Prince had fallen. They would march through all of Delfeur, and the army would regroup in Acquitart. Aleron had already carefully picked the emissary to send to Arles while he travelled the long way.

The sun was high in the sky and Aleron was busy dictating letters to his secretary when Laurent came bursting into the tent, Milet following uselessly at his heels.

“Uncle says,” Laurent began, then paused. He was breathing roughly, chest heaving, as if he’d run here. “Uncle says that he’s taking Auguste’s body home, and I can’t go with him. He told me you said that—”

“You said so yourself,” Aleron interrupted him. “Auguste is dead. Our men out there aren’t. Our people in Delfeur deserve to see their royal family march through their lands one last time.”

Because we failed them, he did not say. If only he hadn’t left Auguste alone in the front – but not, he couldn’t have done anything there. Sent more elite men, leaving the command tent unguarded? Archers, perhaps? Maybe they should have settled on an entirely different strategy.

But there was nothing to be done now: Auguste would return home in a wooden box, marched through the streets in solemn procession, and Aleron would not be there to see it. He would be entombed, and there would be portraits made of his likeness, and statues and engravings, and nothing would ever compare to his son’s face.

To Laurent, he said, “You are my heir, now. Act like it.”

He held Laurent’s eyes. They were blue, like his own, like those of Renier and their mother before them. Auguste had inherited Hennike’s eyes, forest green.

“Am I understood?” he asked, when Laurent didn’t reply. His cheeks were streaked red, and perhaps Aleron shouldn’t have done this in front of witnesses, but there was hardly any time for coddling.

“You will come with me,” he told Laurent. “You will ride in front of the army, and you will be gracious about it. Am I understood?”

There was a curt nod. “Yes, Father.”

Aleron nodded, searching around for somebody to entrust Laurent to. If only his brother were not needed in Arles; he’d always had an affinity for Laurent. Second sons, he supposed. Hennike, as well: unlike his brother, she’d never had clear favourites, but she’d spent so much of her time with Laurent, who’d been younger, and lonely.

“Go with Symon,” he said, eventually, settling on one of his attendants. “He’ll help you get ready. And, Laurent,” he said. “We’ll hold a proper memorial service when we get home.”

—

They left the fields of Marlas behind by early afternoon.

It was a hasty departure and a logistical nightmare, but the Achelons would settle on nothing less than the immediate occupation of the bloody fields. They left their wounded behind, and the stripped-down fort. Perhaps other lords and ladies of the border would receive the opportunity to make arrangements before their sudden exile, but King Theomedes had wanted Marlas immediately. Raoul, lord of Marlas, had been ordered to store as many of his worldly possessions as he could fit in his wagons and leave his home behind. He’d sent his effects to Fortaine, across the new border, and where his steward would make arrangement to have everything shipped to Arles, while the lord himself would board the same ship that would be carrying Auguste’s body. The soldiers of Marlas had been given the choice between resigning their commissions and remaining in Delfeur with their families, or joining Aleron in the long march north.

Their road took them along a twisted serpentine path, to reach as many of the bigger townships as possible. There the people crowded the streets to look at the retreating army, bands of mourning black tied to the arms of the soldiers as they rode.

It was a slow march. Every day Aleron sent messengers ahead and all the mayors, and aldermen and petty lords of Delfeur would send back word, asking for the honour to host the King. The towns could afford it: Delfeur was rich. There would be feasts almost every night, and Aleron would receive condolences for the death of Auguste every time, and introduce his generals and lords along with Laurent, who looked pale and small in the packed halls. And day after day he would listen to the grievance and the worries of the people, knowing that there was little he could do to soothe them.

“They say that Achelons make youths into slaves,” asked the mayor of Loutehel, a town five days from the battlefield. They’d paid taxes to the lord of Marlas, and now they would fill the coffers of an Achelon Kyros. “Your Majesty, the people are afraid. They don’t know what is going to happen.”

Aleron hardly knew what would happen, either. He hadn’t lingered to ask Theomedes about his plans for Delfeur, and perhaps he should have, but the crushing grief and the humiliation of the surrender had been too much. He assumed that the Achelons would appoint new lords and move their armies into the province, and perhaps install new settlers who might receive more rights than the Veretian people of Delfeur. There was a chance that young men might be drafted to serve in the Achelon army and reassigned to the south.

No, Aleron said, he did not know what would happen to the smaller towns, to the artisan shops, to the farms. There might be new taxes on Veretian produces to favour commerce with Achelos within the new border. Achelons had very different notions on how a man should act around his betters, and the people should be made aware of that. They had different mores and different clothing, although the fashion of Delfeur was already closer to Achelon than what one would see further north.

“Achelon slaves are born to the life,” he told the mayor, hoping it would serve as reassurance. “Sometimes, men who cannot pay their debts are made to serve as slaves, and their families too if the debt is great. Sometimes it’s the families themselves that sell infants to the slavemasters if they can’t afford to feed them. I don’t believe they will take your children, if you keep them close.” Sometimes, Aleron had been told, orphans with nobody to look after them were made into slaves. Slavemasters took them, and who was there to pay attention? It would change nothing if he spoke of it now.

“Look after yourselves,” he said. It was all he could do.

Conversations had gone quiet. The attention of the hall was on him, as it should be. When Aleron spoke he made a point of meeting the eyes of all of the aldermen in turn, so that they would remember this day.

“You may, of course, relocate within our new boundaries if you choose to. You may go north, to Fortaine and Nimes. You may go east, where we retain some lands, but the farming won’t be as profitable. Or you may stay here, under the new Achelon masters, who will bring their slaves and their bastards and try to turn this land Achelon,” he said. “And you will raise here your sons and your daughters and remind them where they truly come from.”

He gave the same speech many times, over and over and over. The people watched and they all listened quietly, and afterwards they would cheer. Laurent watched him too, and his eyes were burning. Perhaps he would learn.

After Delfeur there was Acquitart, so familiar yet so strangely foreign. The fortress, modest and homely in the best way, was fresh in the summer and warmer in the winter than snow-ridden Arles, and it had served as the seat of many a retreat over the years, if not so much recently. He’d taken here Auguste often as a boy, when he’d just been learning how to keep his seat on a horse, how to ride into a hunt. Years later, Auguste had taken Laurent. Now, Auguste’s favourite bridle was still in the stables, his hunting knives in the armoury.

Auguste’s rooms, too, were just as he’d left them last time, intact and waiting for him, with Auguste’s clothes in the wardrobe and perhaps an old favourite book left on the bedside table, bound in soft leather. Aleron hadn’t been in the rooms himself, but he could picture every detail.

On the third day of their stay, when he received word from his Guard that they could not find Laurent anywhere, Aleron should have known that he would be in Auguste’s bedchamber, sobbing in Auguste’s bed.

“That is unacceptable,” he told Milet later that evening, after he’d scolded Laurent and sent him to bed.

Or tried to scold him, anyway. Laurent, who could turn from morose and silent to endlessly talkative, had argued relentlessly, throwing back at Aleron his every word. Did he not have the right to go where he wanted, in his family’s own fort? Wasn’t he a Prince? It was impressive how much little Laurent could talk. Perhaps it truly hadn’t been wise to have it out in public. Begrudgingly, Aleron admitted to himself that Laurent likely wasn’t used to the King’s Guard being so concerned with his whereabouts, but he’d still sent Laurent up to his rooms with the order to stay there, for talking back to his father and King. Laurent had given a perfect bow and said, “Yes, Your Majesty,” and walked off with the prettiest sulk Aleron had ever seen. Two of Milet’s men had marched after him.

Aleron turned to his Captain.

“I told you to keep men on him.”

Milet straightened himself up. “I apologize, Your Majesty. It’s – he’s very quiet.” He said it in a very calm tone that nevertheless implied _when he_ _’s not running his mouth_. He’d looked particularly impressed at Laurent’s display of backtalking just now.

He also was not wrong. Aleron had come to realize, in those past two weeks of being closer to his younger son than he had in almost fourteen years, that Laurent had a way of disappearing into the background. He went still and quiet sometimes, dressed unobtrusively in his dark clothing with bright head bowed, and it was almost as if he wasn’t there at all.

But it was no excuse.

“Do better,” he said. “You can’t afford to lose the heir to the throne.”

Saying it out loud was painful. He’d only spoken the words once before, to Laurent himself in a war tent among the dust of the battlefield in Delfeur, and it felt like worlds away. Here, in his family’s ancient seat, he’d admitted it truly, for what it felt like the first time. Auguste was dead, and life would go on without him. It was just him and Laurent now.

Auguste’s body would be in Arles by now, rotting under a slab of stone. Aleron closed his eyes for a brief moment. Opened them. It felt like an unspeakable unfairness, that Auguste should be dead and gone and all he was left with was a sullen boy who didn’t understand duty. But it was all he had.

To Milet, he said, “See that it doesn’t happen again.”

Their stay in Acquitart extended to a week, then ten days. then fifteen, as they waited for the wounded to re-join the bulk of the army. Aleron took advantage of the quiet and the familiarity of the fort to make plans for the aftermath. How many refugees could they expect within the new borders? What to do with the deposed lords of Delfeur who’d come to Arles to seek hospitality? Some of those lords would choose their homes over their kingdom and swear fealty to the Achelons, but not many. Bad blood ran deep on the border.

He spent most of his days closeted with his secretaries and advisers so that he wouldn’t have time to lose himself in grief. Whenever he assigned a task to a general or asked the opinion of a Councillor he remembered that it should have been Auguste at his side, and the wound bled anew. It was easier to forget about Hennike, away from home on campaign, but his bed was cold at night, and he would lie awake for a long time, eyes open in the dark.

In the mornings he made a point of having breakfast with Laurent every day, so that they may become better acquainted, but there was little to talk about. Laurent barely spoke at all, although he had become more manageable. Aleron’s steward had assigned the youngest man in Auguste’s former Guard as Laurent’s companion for the time being, although Colet was the youngest grandson of a country lord and hardly of suitable rank for the heir to the throne. It seemed to help prevent further disappearances, at least, and that was one less issue to deal with.

The rest of the host reached them some days later. It was a warm morning, the skies free of clouds and the foliage around Acquitart was bright green with the promise of summer, the kind of day that would by right suit a victory march.

And if horses could breathe fire, all men would be dragonriders. Aleron gritted his teeth, called for his generals, and did not let himself dwell on what might have been.

Defeat was humiliating, ugly business. Dozens of messages had followed the army from the front: missives from the lords and ladies of Delfeur, reports on the actions of the Achelons in Marlas and the surrounding lands, and two letters sealed with the rampant lion of Achelos that Aleron had immediately be put aside to deal with later. He didn’t want to know what else Theomedes had to say.

In the end, it was five full weeks after the battle in Marlas when they departed Acquitart and left the borderlands behind for good. The rest of the journey should be swifter, with the men in better conditions and less need for stops in every little town to listen to the people fearing about their futures.

That was not to say they were fast. As they moved north they rode through the lands of many of the lords and officers among Aleron’s force, or close enough that not making a detour would be taken as a loss of royal favour. Most lords wouldn’t miss a chance to show the King through their lands, and some chose to remain there as the rest of the host rode on. Others had made their primary residence in Arles, and continued at Aleron’s side with their sworn men and House retainers even after the conscripts that made up half of the host had been dismissed, free to returns to their homes.

The ones who’d survived Marlas, at least.

Their numbers dwindled. They rode through Lys and Chasteigne to Barbin, a path across the heart of Vere that was twisted and serpentine, and not at all like the fast pace they’d kept up on the way south. That had been five months ago now, and the ground had been damp with mud and half-frozen in the early mornings, but they’d ridden as fast as the wind itself, spurred by fear and indignation at the news of Achelos’s sudden attack. And Auguste steadfast at the head of the army, a golden beacon of hope.

It was odd, Aleron thought to himself often, how he’d manage to go hours and even days thinking himself able and whole, and then grief would be on him as quick as lightning, and as impossible to anticipate.

And then came the day when they saw the walls of Arles in the distance, tall and familiar. The King’s Gate was open, and the flags mounted on top of it were flying at half mast. As soon as they were sighted from the city an honour guard was dispatched to escort them inside, led by the Captain of the Gate Garrison. The High Road would be cleared, flanked with onlookers. It would be a slow ascent to the Palace where Renier would be waiting, flanked by Council and court. A public spectacle, but a necessary one.

Aleron gave the last orders for their approach, fingers tightening around the reins. Soon, they would all be home.

The crowds in the streets were subdued, and the guardsmen flanking the royal procession wore dark armbands. Aleron’s steward had sent riders ahead to the Palace to fetch the most formal of his mourning attires, and in the morning Aleron had let his attendants dress him in black brocade and tried not to remember the night he’d buried Hennike.

The same provisions had been made for Laurent, but the clothing he’d worn at his mother’s funeral no longer fit him. He was at that age where the trousers he’d had made before the winter would be too short in the legs come mid-spring, and Aleron’s servants had scrambled to find a solution. Now he sat on the saddle with his eyes downcast and his back too straight, sickly pale in his severe jacket and far too young to follow in his brother’s footsteps.

In the Palace, everything reminded him of Auguste.

There was the spot at the table in Aleron’s study where he’d preferred to sit, and his favourite bench in the rose gardens. Auguste’s horse had been brought back to the stables, and his apartments were filled with clothes and books and trinkets that Aleron would recognise anywhere. He couldn’t bear to look at any of his son’s things.

Auguste had been buried in the family mausoleum, an imposing building not far from Arles’s central marketplace. The streets had been crowded almost to burst, and tens of thousands of strangers and fasted through the night and mourned the passing of their Crown Prince. Aleron had been still in the south then, somewhere in Alier, and after his arrival he had to content himself with a private service in front of a block of stone.

The tears came this time, unbridled, and when Aleron wiped his eyes and blinked he caught sight of Laurent staring at him, mouth half-open as if in surprise.

“What is it?” he said more harshly than he’d meant to.

“Nothing,” Laurent said quickly, looking away.

That evening Aleron ordered that all of Auguste’s things should be packed up and put away, his rooms cleared out. Then he shut himself in the Council Hall for the rest of the week, and when he returned to his quarters in the evening he buried himself in accounts and letters until his eyes blurred, tired and heavy.

His days were filled with meetings on the future of the kingdom and reports on troops morale, and more petitioners seeking audience than he had time to listen to. Plenty of the Delfian nobility had fled the borderlands for temporary refuge in Arles, landless and impoverished, and something should be arranged for them. Arrangements should be made about Laurent’s living situation, too; he put his steward in charge of that.

Laurent had become even more withdrawn since returning to Arles. Aleron saw him in the mornings, pale and sullen on the far side of the table, and he resolved to find him something to do soon enough. A trip, perhaps? His brother might know. Often, Renier seemed to have a far better grasp of Laurent than Aleron himself did.

He instructed his steward to help Laurent move quarters. He would need different accommodations, if not into Auguste’s old apartments then somewhere more suitable for a young prince nearing adulthood, with its own set of rooms and space for servants and guards and entertaining.

“Entertaining,” Laurent said, flat, and Aleron waved it away.

“You can stock piles of books there, for all I care.”

Laurent, who had an awful lot of books piled around in his tiny set of rooms, didn’t object to that. He’d need new tutors as well, Aleron decided, against Laurent’s protests that his old ones would do just fine. Aleron hadn’t followed Laurent’s studies closely, but he knew from Hennike and later from Renier that he was was well past what could be expected at his age, and it was time he applied himself to more practical knowledge.

“If I — I have one favour to ask,” Laurent said, speaking carefully. Aleron nodded.

“May I… could you send for a Kemptian tutor?”

That wasn’t something he’d expected to hear, certainly.

“Laurent,” he said. “You don’t need to learn Kemptian, surely?”

He knew for a fact that Hennike had spoken Kemptian with their children almost exclusively when in private. Aleron had allowed it because he couldn’t begin to guess what it must be like to be Queen in a foreign court, to leave everything behind. Laurent had also spoken the language with his brother more often than not, and that was something Aleron had tried to put a stop to. It wouldn’t do for the Princes of Vere to be anything but fully Veretian, even though he suspected they’d kept at it in private. Back then, their relations with Kempt had been excellent. Then Hennike had died.

“No,” he told Laurent. “Absolutely not.”

“But—”

“I will not have any Kemptians in my court,” Aleron said. “And that is final.”

“It’s not the fault of the people that the Prima has broken the alliance.”

He pronounced the title in Kemptian, the way a native would. Aleron clenched his jaw. “Whatever the Empress,” he stressed the word in Veretian, “—has decided, this is how it reflects on her people. This is not a request I will grant.”

“Fine.” Laurent’s eyes were bright, his voice defiant. “Then there’s something else I want. An Achelon tutor.”

And then, before Aleron could say anything. “If they are to rule our people, I would like to learn about them.”

It was sound reasoning, Aleron thought, and he wondered how long Laurent had been rehearsing the words in his mind. Then he wondered if he’d meant that first request at all or if he’d just been haggling.

He laughed. Laurent’s cheeks went pink, and he bristled in that way boys had when they thought they weren’t being taken seriously enough.

“Father?” he said, half a question, but Aleron waved him away.

“Clever,” Aleron said. “Quite transparent, in hindsight; next time, remember that you don’t want to show your hand so soon against someone else. You can ask Martin to find you your Akielon tutor,” he went on. “In exchange I expect you to go back to your sword training.”

“Of course.”

Laurent’s small nod was very solemn. There was a brief pause, and Aleron thought that perhaps he should say something, draw him out; but he hesitated for too long, and the moment was gone. Laurent bowed his head slightly, the light catching in his hair, and then he turned around and made to leave.

Aleron did not stop him.


End file.
